Now, any speculations if/when the market will get healthy again?I'm hoping for somewhere before the next difficulty. I haven't ever invested in bitcoin so I hope that everything turns out just fine, which I actually believe as well.

I agree. For one thing it relies on encryption and a public log. Encryption can be broken and with bitcoins as is, you can't force new encryption standards on old bitcoins. As for the public log, if someone branches from it or introduces their own log then we loose credibility of the currency.

Bitcoins is a good proof of concept, but I think the concept will be taken over and improved upon by companies who don't respect the same level of anonymity that Bitcoins and Tor promote.

One could just hash the whole old block chain with a new algorithm, the question is how we establish it to be accepted by the peers and transforming it into a new block chain.

Bitcoin's security also rests on SHA256's security, but so far there have been no useful attacks. I think the cryptography and blockchain rules are very robust. What is maybe less robust is the Bitcoin software and network protocol. If we have any problems, it will be because of software/protocol problems (buffer overflows, DDos, poison nodes, etc.), not problems with cryptography or rules of the Bitcoin blockchain.

When I have some time, I'm going to work on auditing the Bitcoin source. If you'd like to support me, donate here: 1uWY36pcXhLC4V4pZ2eZFScRaUPXgPEwC

Spare some BTC for a biology student? 1DZcEUEo9rX7LQWcYzVR6Btqj2sMqRznbB

Please name one, or, if you have the time, some. I'm very happy to learn and if I'm wrong I will happily admit so.

The transaction fee has already been lowered.

I'm not sure what "inaccurate observation or assumption" in my paper you are referring to. I stated that the enforced limits (like indeed transaction fee) are not optimal ones. And that I think that they should definitly not be under control of a small group of developers.

The fact that after publication of my paper the fee has already been lowered seems to support my statement.

EDIT

Since yesterday I have effectivly been labeled a troll (having 'only' 22 posts) and prohited any chance to respond to reply to xf2_org's last mail. This is appearently how the Bitcoin community wants to deal with valid critique.

I'm not going to risk this happening again. If you think my critique is valid, I'm inviting you to join me on:

I'm not sure what "inaccurate observation or assumption" in my paper you are referring to. I stated that the enforced limits (like indeed transaction fee) are not optimal ones. And that I think that they should definitly not be under control of a small group of developers.

That is a central fallacy throughout your paper. The entire community accepts or rejects bitcoin changes. They vote by choosing which bitcoin version to run on the network.

Open source means anyone can fork the code at any time, if the community feels developers are going off into insane-land.

I'm not sure what "inaccurate observation or assumption" in my paper you are referring to. I stated that the enforced limits (like indeed transaction fee) are not optimal ones. And that I think that they should definitly not be under control of a small group of developers.

That is a central fallacy throughout your paper. The entire community accepts or rejects bitcoin changes. They vote by choosing which bitcoin version to run on the network.

Open source means anyone can fork the code at any time, if the community feels developers are going off into insane-land.

I proposed towncoin and am ready to implement it with angel miners. This paper by Steven is a train wreck.

I'm not sure what "inaccurate observation or assumption" in my paper you are referring to. I stated that the enforced limits (like indeed transaction fee) are not optimal ones. And that I think that they should definitly not be under control of a small group of developers.

That is a central fallacy throughout your paper. The entire community accepts or rejects bitcoin changes. They vote by choosing which bitcoin version to run on the network.

Open source means anyone can fork the code at any time, if the community feels developers are going off into insane-land.

that is a fallacy, i agree.

but for me (and others...), the central fallacy is in a section-head:

3.7 Current distribution is unfair

oh. that again...

i am not an 'early adopter', having begun my quest for Bitcoin in march. i begrudge nothing to those who saw, believed and risked the earliest. i will take what i earn, happily. i will not steal from those whose vision has proven to be clearer than mine.

I'm not sure what "inaccurate observation or assumption" in my paper you are referring to. I stated that the enforced limits (like indeed transaction fee) are not optimal ones. And that I think that they should definitly not be under control of a small group of developers.

That is a central fallacy throughout your paper. The entire community accepts or rejects bitcoin changes. They vote by choosing which bitcoin version to run on the network.

Open source means anyone can fork the code at any time, if the community feels developers are going off into insane-land.

Could you be more specific as to what exactly is this 'central fallacy'?

Voting by choosing which version to run sounds good, but I see some problems:

- 'Voting' should then also be possible by running a completely different client, implemented by other developers.

- The default client should not contain limits that prevent running other versions / clients. If the default client won't distribute transactions with a fee less than 0.01, it's going to be very hard to run a client that allows a minimum fee of 0.001. Same with the version number misery...

i am not an 'early adopter', having begun my quest for Bitcoin in march. i begrudge nothing to those who saw, believed and risked the earliest. i will take what i earn, happily. i will not steal from those whose vision has proven to be clearer than mine.

- The default client should not contain limits that prevent running other versions / clients. If the default client won't distribute transactions with a fee less than 0.01, it's going to be very hard to run a client that allows a minimum fee of 0.001. Same with the version number misery...